#the villain form AM was so forgettable i forgot who he was till i thought about it

[timeisacephalopod]

The criticisms I’ve seen for Captain Marvel are fucking stupid. I’m so sorry for the long rant!

Number One: ‘But the skrulls are antagonists in the comics, its insulting to comic fans that they changed it!’ Yes, skrulls are comic villains. But I read I run of Guardians of the Galaxy that had this EXACT storyline. Cosmo (the dog in a space suit we see in GoTG) was hiding skrull refugees who didn’t agree with the skrulls overall goals and Drax deadass killed everyone on the ship for 30 seconds to determine who was and wasn't a skrull, resulting in Cosmo having to defend them to the Guardians because these particular skrulls didn’t agree with their people’s ways and were looking for safety. The refugee storyline is literally CANON. Just because its not a popular storyline doesn’t mean they didn’t pull it from the comics. And we’ve never particularly cared how faithful something is to comic canon before either.

Number Two: she’s over powered. So was Thor when he took the full force of a dying star in Infinity War, so was Tony Stark when he fell out of the sky and smashed into the sand going more than fast enough to break every bone in his body in Iron Man, so was Bucky when he didn't die falling off that train in Captain America, Bruce Banner- no further argument needed. And its worthy to note Peter Quill, who never used his powers before meeting Ego, was able to conjure them almost immediately and use them with a small level of control. Arguably, Loki is overpowered too. Carol Danvers had extensive combat training on TWO planets and already had a decent control on her energy blasting powers, PLUS she was shown to mess up a few times in her final battle but her powers made up for that. Not unlike Captain America in all HIS movies, or Tony Stark for that matter.

Number Three: bUt I dOnT lIkE tHaT iT gOt pOliTiCaL. Oh, you mean like Iron Man talked about US sponsored terrorism and criticized the military and weapons use? Or like Infinity War had Thanos go on and on about over population and resource scarcity? Or IM2 talking about green energy and referencing climate change? Or how about the explicitly political entire third Captain America movie or you know, C A P T A I N  A M E R I C A as an entire character. The guy is literally walking American propaganda in the movies and in real life, plus his first movie criticized war propaganda. Thor 3 touched on historical revisionism and imperialism, it also criticized prison slavery. Political commentary is integral to both the comics and the MCU- the political backdrop of the times shaped how the fucking stories got told. Comic villains are literally whoever America doesn’t like at the time of writing- we know this.

Number Four: ‘but I don’t like that Brie Larson talked about feminism and critics being diverse, this is a bad thing for some reason!!!’ Oh, but we’re going to ignore Chris Evan’s left wing politics and how he’s pretty open about it too, often criticizing Trump and making other left wing criticisms of America? I’ve never seen anyone say they don’t want to see Captain America or that they don’t like Chris Evans so much that they try and bomb a Cap movie before it even comes out due to his politics. And Evans’ political stances are more radical than her critic comment, and even if it wasn’t they have similar politics. Given that no one is trying to boycott Chris Evans I’ll assume that’s total bullshit, otherwise there’d be no difference in Larson’s backlash and his crickets.

Number Five: ‘it wasn’t that good, its only mediocre’ or alternatively ‘the trailer/movie didn’t convince me’ argument. Sure, because Ant Man was mind blowing and not at all a Filler Movie, and Doctor Strange totally doesn’t feel like Magical Iron Man, and Peter Quill totally isn’t Space Iron Man, and Thor’s first movie was totally new and original and memorable. Shit, even First Avenger was mediocre. Now, none of these movies are bad- I liked them all fine but lets be real. Ant Man was a money making venture with no value to the MCU and Scott Lang felt like the sidekick in his own story. The first two Thor movies were DC level Dark and Edgy for no reason and, unpopular opinion, I hated the third. The first two Thor’s were dry and lacking in characterization, and the fact that the third was hilarious and made Thor relatable is the reason for its success and the redemption of Thor as an MCU character in fandom eyes regardless of my personal opinion of it. Doctor Strange was a filler movie too, and while it wasn’t nearly as obvious as Ant Man that it was, it sure shit didn’t add anything amazing to the mix either. The time stone was more important than Stephen Strange to MCU canon. It was a Standard Hero Arc with lackluster villains that Strange deadass annoyed into fucking off. That’s how he won the fight in his movie. He was very annoying. Again, I liked this movie fine but the magic was the only new thing. So where’s the ‘well it wasn’t THAT great, it didn’t blow my mind because I guess that’s what we expect out of a fucking superhero film now’ for these movies? Did we expect any of these movies to have off the wall super amazing the best ever never seen before and will never be done like it again storylines that we... honestly don’t see in most any movie? No. And we know why. But given its genre CM was good, exceptionally within its franchise. Is it the most amazing movie ever? No, but not a single MCU film could qualify for that spot either so why do we expect movies led by minorities like CM and Black Panther to?

These are the things I see brought up the most and not one of them even holds. The movie was good and yet critics are like ‘we don’t wanna seem not progressive because we ranked it bad :(((((( But sometimes its not a good movie :((((((( I know I liked Doctor Stange even though its not nearly as good :((((( And CM is one of the best origin stories in the franchise :((((( and we didn’t scrutinize Ant Man, Doctor Strange, and Thor like this even though they were blatantly filler movies :(((((( But sometimes its not good :(((((( I’m a feminist I swear!’ How about admit that you had STUPID high expectations for no reason at all and were looking for a reason to hate the movie. We’ve been handed much worse than this, and the story was just fine. Carol was compelling and interesting as a character, her hero journey is just different enough to make her stand out, I loved what they did with the kree, and the skrull storyline was unexpected, but interesting. We’ve never expected total faithful adaptation to comics before, people didn’t scream that Civil War deviated pretty hard from the comic counterpart, but I guess the fucking skrulls were too much. Not to mention this movie is one of the very few MCU films that doesn’t have a boring villain. All around it was a solid movie, why are people bitching?